The story’s headline, “Mother and 3 Kids Found Dead in Eddy County, Dad Arrested,” could not be verified by the Current-Argus with the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office.

Nearly identical articles were posted on the same website, inserting the names of various other counties across the United States. There were at least 20 such stories published to the site as of Wednesday.

Inquiries to sheriff’s offices in multiple other counties named in the stories also turned up no factual cases matching the names in the article or the crimes described.

The author was listed as “Police” on each story and the hyperlinked byline led to a list of the duplicates.

Counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New York were all named in the articles.

He said the office does occasionally investigate false articles circulating online, which typically take about 15 to 20 minutes to debunk.

“It does take some time and resources to determine that it didn’t happen,” Hutchinson said. "Depending on how elaborate it is, we can usually figure them out.”

Falsified stories about police activity in the community can not only tie up resources needed for actual incidents, Hutchinson said, but also threaten to cause hysteria among residents.

“It can create some kind of scare in the community,” Hutchinson said. “With any scam, it’s just frustrating to know there are people out there preying on citizens to make them take that as fact.”

The sheriff's office is investigating the origin of the story, which was not clear on the countyreports.info website.

‘Fake news?’

False news stories entered the national spotlight during President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, where he pointed to several instances of supposed “fake news,” mostly related to coverage of himself.

The act of publishing such stories, especially when they involve police, is a criminal act, Hutchinson said, but tracking down the culprit can be an arduous task.

Hutchinson said web stories are more difficult to track down, and the charges depend on what is found in the investigation.

“We’ll look into what’s going on with it,” he said. “It is fraud, but finding out who did it would take some digging. The investigation will dictate the degree of any charges.”

The same article baffled law enforcement about 1,700 miles away from Carlsbad.

Capt. Shawn Gregory at the Cattaraugus County Sheriff’s Office in western New York state, about an hour south of Buffalo, New York, said that despite his county being named in a duplicate article, the alleged crime did not occur there.

Murders are rare in the small New York community, he said, citing Trump’s popular rhetoric to explain the situation.

“It’s fake news,” Gregory said. “That’s nothing that happened in my county. I would certainly know if we had a murder. Don’t believe anything you see on the internet. If it’s local news, it’s probably okay, but not anything on social media.”

Gregory said his office has been plagued by multiple false stories, some that even admitting to being pranks.

Most recently, an article was released on a supposed stabbing and police standoff involving Cattaraugus County deputies, Gregory said.

At the bottom of the article, it read, "You’ve been pranked,” Gregory said.

“It was all just completely false,” he said. “I don’t know why people would waste their time writing something like that.”

Hutchinson said the Eddy County Sheriff's Office and the Carlsbad Police Department also sometimes get erroneous reports confusing Carlsbad, New Mexico, with Carlsbad, California.

Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.